Despite critical advancements in the tech solutions available to conservationists around the world, many existing tools are cost-prohibitive in the landscapes that need them most. Additionally, those who create low-cost and open-source alternatives to pricey market tech are often operating on tight budgets themselves, meaning they have limited resources for the promotion of their solutions to a wider market. We need increased communication around these solutions to highlight their availability, share lessons learned in their creation, and avoid duplication of efforts.
This group is a place to share low-cost, open-source devices for conservation; describe how they are being used, including what needs they are addressing and how they fit in to the wider conservation tech market; identify the obstacles in advancing the capacity of these technologies; and to discuss the future of these solutions - particularly their sustainability and how best to collaborate moving forward.
Header image: Shawn F. McCracken
Freaklabs
I'm an engineer and product designer working on wildlife conservation technology.
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- 272 Discussions
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PhD Candidate at University College London. Research and develop wireless sensor networks for biodiversity monitoring. Currently working on a software package for AI bioacoustics classifiers on edge device.
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- @irood
- | She/her
Earthmover
I'm the chief of staff at Earthmover, a software company making it easier to work with earth system data
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- 3 Groups
- @MattyD797
- | He/Him
PhD Student | Cornell University | Smithsonian Institution; My focus is in computational ecology within fishery acoustics
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- 10 Discussions
- 12 Groups
Software Engineer
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- 5 Discussions
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- @carlybatist
- | she/her
Science Outreach Lead-Rainforest Connection (RFCx) & Arbimon; Ecoacoustics, biodiversity monitoring, primates, lemurs
- 69 Resources
- 284 Discussions
- 18 Groups
- @PshemekZ
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IT + nature
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- 7 Discussions
- 8 Groups
- @luciegallegos
- | she/her
Natural Solutions
As an agronomist engineer, I specialized in environmental management and resource conservation. 🌍 Interested in developing solutions for biodiversity conservation #indicators #monitoring
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- 9 Groups
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Team lead for the ARISE Biocloud team, developing an infrastructure for biodiversity monitoring and digital species identification. Also, project lead for the Diopsis insect camera project.
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- 2 Discussions
- 7 Groups
- @pchwalek
- | He/him/his
I'm a PhD candidate in the Responsive Environments Group, working on electronic systems for human and wildlife monitoring.
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- 3 Discussions
- 9 Groups
Technology to End the Sixth Mass Extinction. Salary: $104k-144K; Location: Washington DC or Seattle WA, potential hybrid; 5+ years of Full stack development experience; Deadline March 15th - view post for full job...
10 February 2023
Careers
Join the Arribada Initiative! We have a unique opportunity for a software developer to create mobile / desktop applications and intuitive user interfaces that assist researchers and fieldworkers to conserve wildlife.
16 January 2023
Using satellite imagery to detect and classify the severity of cyanobacteria blooms in small, inland water bodies.
15 December 2022
As the FieldKit hardware ecosystem grows, Conservify is seeking a Junior Electrical Engineer to assist with testing, troubleshooting, prototype development, and developing production test fixtures for our growing...
9 December 2022
Careers
Conservify is seeking a hands-on Senior Software Engineer with front end and back end experience developing rich web and mobile applications, and a strong desire to build a best-in-class product that stands out in both...
9 December 2022
Conservify is seeking a hands-on Senior Product and Production Manager with strong interpersonal and organizational skills to remotely lead a small seasoned team of thinkers, designers and engineers who are shaping the...
9 December 2022
Conservation partnership launches new award to advance biodiversity conservation from space
5 December 2022
Boost cons tech capacity at an international NGO! Fauna & Flora International is offering a paid three-month internship to consolidate and share best practices for the application of emerging hardware and software...
26 August 2022
Careers
Job opening at ARISE, an innovative program in the Netherlands to build a digital infrastructure for biodiversity data and services
19 August 2022
Article
Ceres Tag sends just in time alerts and GPS location to have the power to track and trace.
22 July 2022
The Earth Species Project (ESP) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to decoding animal communication and translating non-human language.
15 July 2022
This article provides a review of deep learning (predominantly ML) used in marine ecology and considerations for its future directions in conservation. In plain language, the authors provide a methodology for training...
20 December 2021
March 2024
event
November 2023
event
Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Hey Sol, The only way for you to collect information from a GPS tag attached to a FAD is if that tag transmits that data to the drone. Unfortunately most receiver packages... |
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Drones, Emerging Tech, Open Source Solutions | 1 year 5 months ago | |
The open-source program Audacity can show the spectrograms and histograms and has quite a lot of other useful features, e.g. playing ultrasound calls slower, so it can be heard by... |
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Acoustics, Citizen Science, Data management and processing tools, Open Source Solutions, Software and Mobile Apps | 1 year 6 months ago | |
Oh, that looks so good, and some heavy hitting design firms too! |
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Biologging, Build Your Own Data Logger Community, Open Source Solutions | 1 year 7 months ago | |
Thanks so much!! |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Biologging, Camera Traps, Community Base, Data management and processing tools, Drones, eDNA & Genomics, Emerging Tech, Open Source Solutions, Remote Sensing & GIS, Software and Mobile Apps | 1 year 7 months ago | |
I've been working with a current visiting scholar who's from China and has been interested in getting started with some acoustic monitoring studies when he goes back to China... |
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Open Source Solutions | 1 year 10 months ago | |
If you're looking to identify collaborators - probably lots of organizations listed in the Conservation Tech Directory would be interested (quick prelim search yields orgs like... |
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Marine Conservation, Open Source Solutions | 1 year 10 months ago | |
Hey all!I'm well into my journey into the field of conservation now, after volunteering and freelancing for a couple of different... |
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Biologging, Community Base, Open Source Solutions | 1 year 10 months ago | |
Dear Community,Together with Hackster.io, Seeed Studio is very happy to jointly organize “IoT Into the Wild Contest for Sustainable Plant... |
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AI for Conservation, Connectivity, Emerging Tech, Open Source Solutions, Sensors | 1 year 11 months ago | |
There are only a few days left to apply to the 2022 Gathering for Open Science Hardware! Join a community of scientists, hardware developers, artists, and activists... |
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Community Base, Open Source Solutions | 2 years ago | |
We are excited to announce that the 2022 Gathering will be held in Panamá from October 26-29. Applications to attend are now open,... |
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Open Source Solutions | 2 years 1 month ago | |
The Gathering for Open Science Hardware (GOSH) has opened its second round of regional events funding! This program is perfect for groups... |
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Community Base, Open Source Solutions | 2 years 2 months ago | |
At IUCN, we are collecting examples of best practices and case studies of tech use in and around protected and conserved... |
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Open Source Solutions | 2 years 2 months ago |
Restoring the Mara Elephant Population Using Coexistence Tech Solutions with Mara Elephant Project's Wilson Sairowua
20 October 2023 1:31pm
Unravelling freshwater turtle activity with an open source, low-cost accelerometer
6 October 2023 1:04pm
Experience with SeeedStudio T1000 as tracker and data logger.
4 September 2023 1:42pm
CIEEM 2023 Autumn Conference: Modernising Ecology: Techniques and Approaches
5 September 2023 1:59pm
Mobile App. Developer / Gibbon Research
24 August 2023 9:59am
Catch up with The Variety Hour: August 2023
14 August 2023 11:50am
Making Waves: Open Hardware as a Solution to Scaling up Bycatch Mitigation
9 July 2023 12:14pm
AI for Eagles Challenge
7 July 2023 10:03am
pneumatic artificial muscle applications in conservation tech?
5 July 2023 6:59pm
New Add-ons for Mbaza AI
4 July 2023 12:00pm
Catalog of open source conservation projects
30 June 2023 4:40pm
3 July 2023 2:53am
There is the Conservation Tech Directory! There's an 'open-source' tag you can search by too.
Making Waves: Open Hardware as a Solution to Scaling up Bycatch Mitigation
2 July 2023 11:24am
Sustained Effort: The Environmentalist’s Dilemma
21 June 2023 9:00am
PhD Position in Deep Learning for Biodiversity Monitoring: Custom Imaging Platform and Deep Learning to Classify and Phenotype Earthworms
21 June 2023 8:23am
Information Session: Technology Testing to Mitigate Human-Elephant Conflict in West Bengal
19 June 2023 11:07pm
Innovation wanted: Technology Testing to Mitigate Human-Elephant Conflict in West Bengal
19 June 2023 10:54pm
The Wildlife Society Conference
19 June 2023 5:59am
Wildlife Monitoring Engineer
8 June 2023 4:54pm
Panthera: Monitoring Wildlife with Open-Source Data Management Tools
11 May 2023 5:52pm
Call for survey participants (AI/ML practitioners)
19 April 2023 3:17pm
Global shortage of Raspberry Pis - What are the alternatives
3 November 2022 10:27am
28 March 2023 9:37pm
Have you considered Arduinos?
29 March 2023 10:13am
UPDATE: The Banana Pi didnt work out for us as it was not possible to track back all the components and ensure that they were responsibly sourced. The Rock board did work for us and we were able to port our system onto this. We will be rolling out units using this over the summer. It also looks like Raspberry Pis are coming back on line and we were able to secure a bulk order for deliver mid-summer
29 March 2023 10:14am
Yes, but for our needs that are not powerful enough
$500 micro grants for open science events
10 March 2023 1:19pm
The gathering for open science hardware is giving up grants for people putting on events that promote open science hardware
A simple and free application!
https://forum.openhardware.science/t/usd-500-microgrants-available-for-…
Proposals wanted for Innovation in Practice
6 March 2023 10:34pm
Moveapps: EMAC23 Coding Challenge
3 March 2023 7:58am
3 March 2023 3:12pm
Super initiative! I hope you get a lot of entries to this coding challenge!
6 March 2023 7:53am
Thanks Lars! Look forward to any entries from you and your colleagues. If you have an questions or suggestions, let me know.
6 March 2023 1:11pm
Hi Andrea! Although I am a keen user and observer of the Moveapps initiative, my R or Python coding skills are next to non- existing. I am therefore not likely to be contributing this time... Some day perhaps ;)
USD500 available for your workshop
6 March 2023 1:30pm
Moveapps EMAC23 Coding Challenge – Participate now!
3 March 2023 7:45am
The Arbimon newsletter is back!
23 February 2023 11:34pm
Deep Sea BRUVS Development
28 January 2023 1:41am
11 February 2023 3:07am
Hi Titus,
If the usual syntactic foam sources aren't available, an option may be to add an empty dry housing or use a larger housing for the BRUV, just to provide the buoyancy.
You can make your own syntactic foam from glass microballoons and epoxy resin, but this will require experimentation and testing. For sub-surface buoyancy, you could also use a jerry can full of cooking oil, or a coil of polypropylene rope.
Hiring Full Stack Developer at Conservation X Labs
10 February 2023 5:35pm
8 September 2023 4:37pm
ooh very cool Salman! Amazing how much tracking devices have come down in price over the years and LoRa/LoRawan is just such a perfect fit for GPS data. Thanks heaps for sharing.
All the best,
Rob